Ahem ...

My latest novel, "Halting State", a near-future thriller of skullduggery and rules lawyering in the shadowy world of massively multiplayer virtual reality games, is officially published today in the US. (It'll be published in trade paperback in the UK in early January.) The book covers to either side link to Amazon pages where you can buy them now: it's interesting to compare the different approaches the British and American art directors have taken.

Now, if I wasn't a self-effacing Brit, I ought to be taking this opportunity to tell you how good this book is, and how you can't possibly live without it. But I'm shy and bashful, so I'll leave it up to some other folks to tell you about it.

Vernor Vinge said: "Charles Stross is the most spectacular science-fiction writer of recent years. In 'Halting State', he has written a near-future story that is at once over-the-top and compellingly believable.".

And William Gibson commented: "As keenly observant of our emergent society as it is our emergent technologies, 'Halting State' is one extremely smart species of fun."

But wait, there's more!

John Carmack (yes, that John Carmack) adds, "Just the right mix of extrapolation and intrigue to leave me wondering to the very end."

While Bruce Schneier enthuses,"A great read, and a fascinating look at future of security in a massively networked world."

And the New York Times froths: "The Act of creation seems to come easily to Charles Stross ... [He] is peerless at dreaming up devices that could conceivably exist in six, sixty, or six hundred years' time".

Now that I've dropped the cover blurb neutron bomb, don't you want to read it?

61 Comments

It is also a "Featured Selection" for this month for the Science Fiction Book Club in the US. Although it won't get in my hands as fast that way, it helped reduce my first year "obligation" to the club.

Michael, I do not think it would be appropriate for me to comment on the comparative merits of my UK covers versus their US equivalents; I've got to work with both publishing companies, after all! But I think it's safe to say that the British and American covers are both designed to sell the book in a manner deemed appropriate for their respective markets' interests. The British and American design traditions differ sharply, and fashions in cover art are currently diverging.

(Ace printed up Advance Reader Copies and distributed them to the trade, and the cover on the ARC didn't have an Edinburgh skyline on it, or a female figure: it was about as abstract as the UK cover. However, as a result of direct feedback from the big chain store buyers they felt the need to change it. Personally I preferred the original version, but what do I know about the psychology of retailing? I've got to assume the professionals know what they're doing -- and at least they let me comment on the redesign before they finalized it.)

On ebooks: I believe Amazon (who own Mobipocket) are having a major ebook push later this month. A mobipocket edition (not to mention Sony, Adobe, MS Reader and Palm editions) should be available within the month. I'd guess this means you'll find it on mobipocket.com in due course. I expect that these editions will be DRM'd and priced so as not to undercut the hardcover (boo) but you never know; Amazon don't seem to be too fond of DRM (as witness their MP3 storefront) and there are some signs of publishers waking up to the price sensitivity of ebook editions.

I hope to have something tasty to announce to coincide with the UK launch, but I can't comment on matters still under discussion.

D. Ellis: an original cover painting for a book costs money. In some cases, the fee for the cover art can equal the advance the writer gets paid for the book. Not getting an expensive painting can mean one or more of three things: (a) they don't have a significant marketing budget for your book, (b) they think your book will sell well even without an expensive painting, or (c) expensive paintings are out of fashion in marketing circles.

The British cover looks like a users manual. Low friction. My eye, she bleeps right over it.

Of course, I am one of the few commenters on this blog who doesn't like science fiction. (With a few exceptions, obviously.) So, speaking as the marginal consumer in the Barnes & Noble that they're trying to attract, they done did good, Charlie.

And I was about to CANCEL my SFBC subscription.. I'll buy this one just because I enjoyed accelerando, & iron sunrise recently..

Some blogger the other day was talking about how all genre lit is a rehash of the same stuff..
and he didn't even exempt Sci Fi
(OK Critical elements in Good Sci Fi are the "new idea".. and extrapolation of future trends.. if it doesn't have that..
-- so is that the "same-old" New stuff?

Charles, your stuff has lots of "new Ideas", and you have been
pushing the edge in extrapolation..
Keep it up.

NB: I am currently feeling a little smug, because "Halting State" is the #4 top seller in SF on Amazon.com right now, #9 in SF and Fantasy (Fantasy outsells SF by 2:1), and sales ranked at #219 overall.

Wow.
Looks like Borders in the Bay Area broke street-date, if today is official release. However, as someone has already noted, seems like libraries also get to break street date!

However, this simply means I have already grabbed and read your newest brainchild. I will refrain from lowering myself to fanboy-esque blathering here. All that can be said is that you have once more managed to combine a fast paced, enjoyable tale with matter more dense and thought provoking - and on a subject that has been throw around in my circles for awhile, as intellectual exercise on how strange things are becoming as electronic communities begin to break the barriers of states and nations.

I've just finished Jennifer Morgue (excellent book btw :-)) so I'm buying Halting State ASAP. re: the covers I find that british covers in general is much nicer than american. But this is an exception. It looks bloody awful (sorry Charlie)

On second thought, the american cover doesn't really match the insides as they're described in the back blurb. It looks more like a Heavy Metal (the magazine that is) cover. Thus is might fool a potential reader, who looks for fantasy/sf books. It's still a much nicer cover though, [suck up] and I don't doubt that people who buy the american edition will become instant Stross fans... [/suck up] ;-)

I also think the US cover looks better, it would be interesting to see what would happen both designs were offered on equal terms. I've had it pre ordered from Amazon for a while - it's supposed to be arriving between 19 October and 2 November (must be paddling itself over the Atlantic...) Anyway, thanks, as this is something to look forward to!

I just picked it up, the guy at the store said that your books are the fastest sellers of all their Science Fiction.
I'm about 70 pages in, and I really like it.
the US cover is pretty similar to other modern scifi, but it seems like I'm the target Demo or something but I like that style.

Colin: the British edition is a trade paperback. Also, I've just been working over the copy edits, and a couple of errata that were overlooked in the US edition will be fixed in the British one. Otherwise, it's identical.

Perhaps it is a culture thing. I'm english, and the UK cover seems superb to me. I can't put my finger on why, but it does something interesting to my head. It might be to do with the book character -- game character switch.

I'll add another wish for an eBook edition. DRM-free, that is, since I will not touch the vile stuff. I dislike reading on-screen but I do live in Brazil for the moment and it appears the book is marked by a lack of availability here. Well, I'll be in the US in a few weeks....
For the record: the US cover appeals more to me and I'm German. And it was Schneier's comment that most piqued my curiosity in the announcement.
Jan

PS: I very much appreciated you traveling tips, being a moderately heavy traveler myself without any recent US experience.

Charlie, stop that, you're making me drool. According to UPS tracking my copy has arrived in Portland, so it should be delivered sometime tomorrow. I'll have to wait until I get home from work to rip the package open and start devouring it. So no more nagging :-)

Luckily I have plenty of time to read it before next Thursday when I'll ask you to sign it at Powell's.

It might not have the artistic quality or the grab of the two primary covers, but there's something about Perl code that just looks... so right... in conjunction with Charles's name on the cover — even his fiction.

Re immediate acquisition: <AOL>. I will buy this tomor^Wtoday. I'm already unlikely to be in to work before 10:00, another half-hour won't impact my productivity. Being sucked into what promises to be a superb and absorbing tale, OTOH, will have consequences.

Bring the consequences. I'll have a new Stross book to read!
(skipping and poinging, bookward bound)

† Books Inc., in mtnview.ca.us. They appear to have received them (HS was listed "Advance Order" yesterday).

David: the two publishing schedules (US and UK) are the result of the book being sold to different publishers in their respective countries. In the US, it's published by Ace, an imprint of Penguin Group, and they roll their mass market paperbacks twelve months after the hardcover. In the UK, it was purchased by Orbit, and due to a procedural balls-up they didn't buy it until six months after Ace. Consequently they had to scramble to bring a trade paperback edition out in January, rather than synchronising their first editions. By the time it hits mass market paperback, though, with any luck Orbit and Ace will be publishing simultaneously.

The way to ensure the books come out at exactly the same time on both sides of the pond is for my agent to sell world English language rights to one company. Hint: if she thought she could make more money doing that, she'd do it.

As Prince Otto von Bismarck remarked (paraphrased, from memory): "anyone who enjoys laws or sausages should avoid acquainting themselves with the business of making them." The same goes for books.

Charlie - can you tell us why there's no UK hardback? Is there little demand for hardbacks over here, perhaps? I'm getting tired of paying the shipping costs when I get your books from Amazon.com rather than .co.uk, but perhaps there's nothing to be done...

Giles: whether or not to do a hardback is a policy decision the publisher makes on the basis of anticipated sales. Right now, the UK is a cut-throat market for hardcovers, and to make matters worse, grey imports from the USA -- aggressively underpriced due to the weak dollar -- undercut domestic hardcovers. Especially if they're doomed to come out three months late, due to the synchronization issues I mentioned in my previous comment. Remember, the UK is a smaller market, so the production/marketing overheads per book sold are substantially higher than in the USA, and despite the cover price being somewhat higher the profit per unit sold is not necessarily any better.

Found the only copy of HS locally available yesterday (the window display copy) and am enjoying it immensely. The second-person narrative style is so smooth that you might not even notice it until you're chapters in — and utterly hooked.

Be warned: Reading Halting State in the presence of others will inevitably affect their perception of you when you burst out in involuntary laughter.

Ta to Horton at Books Inc. (who promised to order more copies soonest) for finding the display copy.

Matt@22 I work as a bookseller and from what I've seen, publishers assign street dates to all books but make booksellers adhere to them on only a select few titles (usually for big name authors or major event type books). For all other books we can put them out as soon as we get them in. I received my copy a couple of weeks ago and devoured it. I then ordered in several more copies to handsell.

I have to say, after reading Glasshouse I didn't think you'd top yourself any time soon, but Halting State does it. I really should just stop expecting you to write only a decent novel :)

The only problem I really had with it was that I thought all the innovations you use wouldn't be as prevalent as you assume they will be in 11 years. Eventually, yes, but not that quickly. But then I remember I'm reading fiction so I just shut off my reality lobe for awhile.

As far as the tech goes, I really liked the way you used cell phones as the basis for your distributed network and as the processing power for the VR glasses. Not being a hardcore tech geek I don't know how close we are to something like that, but I could definitely see that happening. And after reading Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End last year it was pretty neat to see essentially the beta version of the VR/overlay tech that he has in it. I definitely want that tech right now!

In any event, kudos on a truly great novel. I sincerely hope that with this you can finally take home your long overdue Hugo and/or Nebula (preferably both).